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Looking back at the end of the world

A popular belief is that the world is going to end on Dec. 21, 2012. But this isn't the first time the end of the world has been predicted, and it has survived so far.

We're taking a look back at the end of the world and some of the most noteworthy predictions made about it.

Dec. 21, 2012, is the current popular date for the end of the world. This is based on a misinterpretation of the Mayan long calendar, which ends a "Long Count" cycle on that date. Experts said that for the Mayans, the end of such a cycle would be a cause for celebration. The next cycle would then begin, just like putting up a new calendar on your wall.

Various ways in which the world is predicted to end this year include alien invasion, a giant supernova roasting the Earth or a collision with an asteroid or the fictional planet Nibiru. NASA notes that none of these events appear to be imminent.

The end of the world has been predicted for a very long time. Romans feared that the city would be destroyed 120 years after it was founded, which would be 634 BCE. This was based on a myth that 12 eagles revealed to Romulus when the city would be destroyed, and early Romans thought each eagle represented 10 years.

Many predicted apocalypses center on Christian predictions regarding the return of Jesus. Some early Christians expected this would happen within a generation of his birth, triggering the end times in the 1st century CE.

Various theologians predicted a date for the Christian apocalypse in the following centuries, often revising the date either when it didn't occur or when thoughts changed about key events in the Bible.

Popular predicted dates for the apocalypse were the years 500 and 1000. Some Christians thought the year 1033 was likely, representing the 1,000th anniversary of the believed death and resurrection of Jesus.

Real catastrophes sometimes triggered the belief that the world was ending. When the Black Death spread through Europe in 1346-1351, many thought it was the end of the world. The disease killed an estimated 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population and resulted in major economic and social upheaval.

In 1780, many New England residents believed the world was ending when the sky turned dark during the day. It's believed that the cause was actually smoke from forest fires, combined with a thick fog and cloud cover.

The end of the world was a popular event for astrologers to predict. Several predicted that a flood starting in London would destroy the world on Feb. 1, 1524.

When the flood didn't happen, the same astrologers revised the date of the flood to Feb. 1, 1624. The flood didn't happen then, either.

The Puritan minister Cotton Mather, remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials, predicted the world would end in 1697. When it didn't, he revised his prediction to 1716. He then revised the date for the last time to 1736. He died in 1728, before he could see his final prediction fail.

In 1806, there was quite a stir when a hen in Leeds, England, began laying eggs that had the phrase, "Christ is coming," scrawled on them. Eventually, it was discovered to be a hoax by a man who had written on the eggs in acid and then reinserted the eggs into the hen.

In the 1840s, the Christian sect known as Millerites made predictions that the end of the world was near. The most anticipated date was Oct. 22, 1844, for the return of Jesus. When that didn't happen, it was known as the Great Disappointment and led to the fracturing of the sect and the creation of new groups, such as the Seventh Day Adventists.

Astronomical observations have also triggered thoughts about the end of the world. Astronomer Camille Flammarion believed the 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet might destroy all life on Earth.

Aliens are sometimes linked to apocalyptic beliefs. A small cult grew around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin when she said she received a message from aliens from the planet Clarion that a flood would destroy the world On Dec. 21, 1954. The group believed that true believers would be rescued by a flying saucer.

Apocalyptic thinking was a factor in the creation of the Peoples Temple. Founder Jim Jones predicted that a nuclear war would engulf the planet in 1967. That didn't happen, but it spurred Jones' drive to create a socialist community that could survive such an event and rebuild. He eventually built Jonestown in Guyana, where 914 members of the Peoples Temple killed themselves in 1978.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, leader of the New Age religious movement the Church Universalist and Triumphant, gained national attention after predicting nuclear apocalypse on April 23, 1990, leading her followers to stockpile weapons and build shelters in Montana.

The world braced for a computer-based apocalypse in 2000, when the Y2K bug was expected to cause serious damage to information systems. Because old computer code calculated dates based on just the last two digits of the year, the concern was that things would go awry when the date flipped to "00."

But extensive problems never came to pass. There's still some debate whether the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on fixing old computer code was worth it. Some say it prevented serious problems, while others note that some countries that did little to prepare didn't suffer any issues.

The French seer Nostradamus wrote a number of quatrains that some have interpreted as predicting the rise of the Antichrist or the end of the world. The History Channel has aired programs featuring analysts interpreting Nostradamus as predicting the end of the world in 2012, even though his writings never mention the end of the world or the year 2012.

Radio broadcaster Harold Camping has used numerology to make several predictions about the end of the world. When his most recent prediction of Oct. 21, 2011, passed without an apocalypse, he reportedly said that his attempt to predict the date was "sinful."

But the world's got to end sometime, right? It's likely to be pretty far off in the future, though. Geoscientist James Kasting predicts that in about 500 million years, Earth will no longer have enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be habitable.

In about 5 billion years, the sun will swell into a red giant, either scorching the Earth or enveloping it. The sun may become too hot for the Earth to sustain life in just 1 billion years.

Even after the sun is gone, the universe will continue for quite some time. Current thought is that the universe is going to keep expanding. Eventually, there will not be enough energy in it for anything to happen. This is known as the heat death of the universe and is expected in 10^100 years.

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